by E. A. Copen
He broke down, sobbing with a hand over his face.
Sal’s arm left its place around my back and he rose, trotting up the stairs to stand with Ed. He put a hand on Ed’s shoulder and squeezed. Pews creaked as more of the pack rose in tandem and made their way up to stand with Ed, placing their hands on him. When there wasn’t room, they formed a line, each placing their hands on the one in front of them. Even Mia squirmed out of my lap to go up with Hunter. By the end of it, Ed wasn’t the only one trying to overcome tears in the room.
Ed raised his head and wiped away tears. “Mara’s journey doesn’t end here. As Gandalf said, ‘Death is just another path, one we all must take. The gray rain curtain of the world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. Then you see it: white shores, and beyond, a green country under a swift sunrise.’ So, I guess she’s finally found a place that’s good enough.”
Daphne lifted her hand from Ed’s back and threw her arms around her little brother. He cried in her arms a minute while the others came to take their seats. Then, the two of them walked off the dais together.
The bishop came back out and asked if anyone else would like to say anything.
I stood. There were dozens of people who had wanted to speak when the funerals were being organized. Few of them knew how to articulate, and had come to me with their stories and notes. It had been somehow decided that I would be the de facto speaker for everyone in Paint Rock, having known both Reed and Mara.
The stairs creaked under me as I walked up. An expectant hush fell over the crowd when I took my place in front of the pulpit. I looked down at all the faces of the hurting, the lost. Was this what Reed saw when he stood up here to give his sermons?
I cleared my throat. “If you’ve ever been to one of Father Reed’s sermons, you probably know the sanctuary was never this full on Sunday afternoon. But it never needed to be full. If even one person was here, and sometimes when it was empty, he still led prayers and song, just in case someone would wander in. If I had to choose one word to describe him, it would be dedication. Rare is the one among us who can live as he asks others to live, pure of heart, unwavering in his faith, and devoted to the service of others, always before himself.
“Reed and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but we agreed on one thing. Love your neighbor. Whether that person is a vampire, a werewolf, an addict, or even a killer, everyone is deserving of love, even when you can’t condone their actions. He taught everyone who would listen that love and faith are the only important powers, and that forgiveness, especially forgiveness of yourself, is its own power.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before looking down at where Mara lay. “I’m still learning that last part. I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. I can’t change that, but what I can do is go through every day as Reed would have, as Mara would have wanted, and choose to do a little better every day I’m alive. Nobody’s perfect, but we can all learn to be a little more perfect every day.
“It might be a little cliché to say they’re gone but not forgotten, but every time you help a friend, you honor their memory. Every time you stand against oppression, inequality, and racism and instead choose acceptance and love, you remember what it cost, the price they paid, fighting for those very things.”
I stopped and shuffled the papers I’d brought up with me. I’d reached the end of what I’d written, but it didn’t feel like I’d said enough. There was one more thing I wanted to say.
I swallowed the tightness in my throat, but my voice still came out shaky. “I’m not big on religion, but you don’t have to believe to have faith. Faith is supposed to be what you hope for, something you believe in without seeing it. I have faith that the world Mara wanted so desperately, the world Reed worked so hard to create, it can exist. But we’re going to have to fight for it, tooth and nail if we have to. That’s what they would have wanted. Thank you.”
I left my papers on the podium and wandered back down to my seat. Sal put his arm around me and squeezed. Hunter leaned into my shoulder, and Mia grabbed my arm.
Lennon’s Imagine and Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds played, then the bishop made some closing remarks.
I didn’t listen much. I kept replaying it all in my head, trying to find some rhyme or reason for why things had turned out this way. It didn’t feel fair that I got to sit there with my family while a young life had been cut short and a good man had died. Sometimes, life just isn’t fair. There isn’t always a reason. It’s human nature to look for patterns, to look for that cause-and-effect relationship. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.
Gideon Reed and Tamara Speilman were buried in the small graveyard behind the old white church under a sunny sky.
We spent the next few weeks trying to find some way to get back to normal. Doctor’s appointments, meetings, and work took up my time again during the day. At night, nightmares plagued me. More often than not, I woke up screaming, barely remembering the dream that had driven me into that state. I added counseling once a week with Daphne. I had to work through everything with Warren somehow.
It was almost a month after the funeral that I went back. I parked my car in front of the building and looked up at the towering steeple. The church had sat empty since that day. As far as I knew, the local diocese was still looking for someone to fill the post.
I got out of the car and walked to the little iron gate surrounding the cemetery, only to pause when I realized I wasn’t alone. Ed stood in front of Mara’s headstone, head bowed. It was the first time I’d seen him since the funeral. Sal said he was checking in on him, so I tried not to worry, but life didn’t feel the same without Ed in it, causing trouble.
I walked slowly up behind him, making sure I made enough noise that he knew I was there. “Hey, Ed.”
He turned his head. “Hey.”
I strode up beside him and nodded to him. “I see you’re walking on your own again.”
“Yeah.” He turned his attention forward.
I followed his gaze to Mara’s headstone. Resting against it was a carved and polished stick of wood painted purple, twisted into a spiral at the end with a notch about halfway down. I turned my head and saw that Ed carried an exact replica of the same stick, except his was gray. “What’s that?”
“Our wands came a few days ago. I just couldn’t make it out to give Mara hers.” Ed swallowed and then turned to face me. “Judah, I’m going away from Paint Rock for a little while. So much has happened. I feel like I need to clear my head, see the world a little, you know?”
I nodded. “I understand, Ed. Does Sal know?”
“Yeah, he thought it was a good idea.”
He turned back to Mara’s grave, and we stood in companionable silence for a while before I asked, “Where will you go?”
“I’ve always wanted to see Alaska, or maybe the Yukon. There’s a lot of open space up there to run. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get good at hunting.” He cleared his throat. “I need you to do something for me while I’m gone, Judah.”
“Anything, Ed.”
“I don’t want to leave her wand out here where something will carry it off and the weather will ruin it.” He turned his head to smile at me. “Will you take it for me? Keep it safe? Maybe bring it out every once in a while so that maybe…we can kind of be together. I know it’s silly, but it means something to me.”
I smiled and put a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “Of course I will, Ed.”
Ed offered me his hand and I took it, trading grips with him.
“Paint Rock is going to miss you,” I said.
Ed looked around the graveyard and then up at the sky. “Eh, it’s not goodbye. I’ll be back. My pack is here.” He knelt and picked up a long box from the ground, handing it to me. “See you, Judah. Try not to let Seamus kill you in a few months.”
“Have a little faith.”
Ed gave a weak smile. “I’ve always had faith in you, ever since that night you threw the ball in Chanter’s back yard.”
Ed walked out of the cemetery, head high and shoulders set. He looked a lot better than he had in a long time, even if he’d had to go through Hell to get there.
We’d all been through Hell. Maybe that’s what it meant to be family, to be a pack. When someone you love walks into fire, you don’t let them go alone.
I knelt in front of Mara’s grave to pick the wand up and a shadow fell over me. I thought at first that Ed had forgotten something and turned around, only to find Dick standing over me. He wore an exact replica of the suit he’d been wearing before, complete with the long, black coat, despite the heat. That black coat, though, was covered in little white hairs from the cat he held in his arms. Reed’s cat.
Dick smiled. “Hello, Judah.”
Except he didn’t call me Judah. He called me by my real name, the name I had before I joined BSI.
I narrowed my eyes at him and withdrew my hand from the wand before I stood. “What do you want, Dick?”
He drew a soft-looking hand over the cat’s back. “Just checking in on my investment.”
“Investment?”
The smile he wore faded, and his cheeks sagged a little. “I’m sure you have questions still, but I can’t answer everything. Had circumstances not dictated otherwise, I would have preferred to delay your involvement.”
I put my hands in my pockets in an effort to keep them from shaking. Truth was, I was terrified of Dick. He had all the information, knew all the answers, held all the cards. I was a pawn in his larger game and had been for quite some time. If not for the fire that night out near Eola, I might never have known about Deputy Director Dick Richardson at all. Chance hadn’t brought us together; it had only revealed one card in his hand a round sooner than expected. The idea that he was using me made me feel sick.
“Is it true what Warren said? Am I like him?”
“No.” Dick raised his chin. “And yes. You’re far from immortal, and yet you’re more than just some young woman gifted with magick. You were made for this. Born for it. Bred for it.”
“Bred?” I frowned. So, it was true, or at least Dick wanted me to think it was. Someone somewhere had meddled in my DNA to make me what I was today. Just how far that went was still up in the air. The way he phrased it made me think that the changes were fundamental, instituted at the time of my conception.
It wasn’t impossible. I’d been raised by a single mother who was deeply religious. I’d asked about my father only once, and my mother was so distraught she couldn’t answer me. Or maybe she was overwhelmed. How do you tell your little girl that she’s some kind of government-engineered freak?
“Why me?” I asked as a heavy wind swept through the cemetery. “Why here and why now? If you were going to make a mutant weapon, why drop her in the middle of nowhere without resources? And why did it take so long for me to realize I had this…this shadow fire?”
“Shadow fire, is it?” Dick raised his eyebrows. “I suppose that’s an appropriate name.”
“Just answer the damn question.”
Dick shifted the cat in his arms. “Paint Rock may be in the middle of nowhere, Judah, but that doesn’t mean no one is watching. The whole world is watching. What happens here will decide the future of this country, maybe even the world. You are here because here is where you’re needed.”
“And what about the other question? Why didn’t I know about the shadow fire before?”
“Some abilities only surface in situations of extreme stress.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you experienced the push you needed at just the right time. After all, it couldn’t have been easy moving across the country, fighting giants and wendigos and ghosts.”
“So Warren was right.”
“Warren was a madman, the son of a madman. A failed experiment in a long line of failed experiments needed to perfect the next step in a very long process.”
“What process?”
Dick smiled and peeled the cat from against his coat, leaving behind streaks of white fur. He held the cat out to me.
Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to leave Reed’s treasured pet in the care of someone like Dick, I took the cat. “Is it me?” I asked, shifting the cat’s weight as he struggled against me.
“No. Warren came after, just like LeDuc’s experiments, just like Han’s. You’re asking the wrong questions. What you should be asking is what exactly Doctor Han has been trying to make in his laboratory for the last ten years?”
Dick reached out to pet the cat, which took a swipe at him, claws out. Dick jerked his hand away. “Goodbye, Judah. Take care of that cat.” He turned his back and started out of the cemetery.
“Hey!” I called after him and tried to follow, but stopped at the entrance to the cemetery when I saw him get into an armored car.
Mara’s wand lay behind me against her headstone. I’d promised Ed I’d take care of that too, and my promise to him was more important than playing a game of riddles with Dick. I turned around and walked back to the headstone, where I bent over and picked up the wand. It was lighter than I expected and balanced oddly, but there was no mistaking the faint hum of magick in the wood. I smiled to myself when I opened the box and found an inscription on the inside of the lid. “Always. Love, Ed.”
I put the wand safely inside and closed the box.
Judah Black will continue… Sign up to E.A. Copen’s mailing list for updates!
Author Notes
December 11, 2019
Just about everyone I know went through a vampire phase. For most of them, it was during their teens. I hung out with a lot of kids in the goth subculture in high school who were obsessed with Underworld. I never really got into it. Not me. I was uninterested in stories about vampires, wizards, and magic because I was going to be a serious author. I had plans to finish up my creative writing degree, go get my MFA in creative writing, teach at some college and write in my spare time.
Then Judah Black happened.
It began with a drunken bet between college friends, as all great stories do.
In her tween years, my step-daughter was obsessed with a certain vampire book series where the vampires sparkle. After skimming some of the book, a friend of mine joked that I could write a better vampire novel and I didn’t even like vampires! A few drinks later, we both thought it was a great idea to enter this thing called the Three-Day Novel contest and write different vampire books.
She sobered up and got wise. I didn’t.
The first daft I wrote was very different. The main character was a man named Judas and he worked as a demon hunter/exorcist for the Vatican with his sexy vampire partner. It was embarrassingly awful. To this day, I can’t believe I actually shipped that manuscript off to be judged. Those poor judges!
They obviously didn’t publish it, and wisely so. It sat unused on my hard drive for almost two years before I decided to try and rescue it. Very little changed other than moving the whole story from New York to Texas. It’d take another three drafts before I decided to change to a female protagonist and had anything close to what you have today.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the journey. I had to get the book out to the world. At the time, I was still a broke college student. I had a special needs toddler at home and a new baby. I could barely afford diapers, let alone editing. In the beginning, I begged, borrowed and traded to get my first cover, made deals with a friend to get the editing taken care of. I slapped together a book and put it out to the word, expecting it to do nothing.
And then it sold 50 copies. People liked it and wanted more. I suddenly found myself in the very awkward situation of having to put together more books in short order.
As any author will tell you, 50 books does not a living make. I definitely shouldn’t have convinced my husband I’d just stay home with our kids, write, and edit on the side and make enough money.
No matter what I did, these books never really took off. I know now that’s largely because I was an idiot and had no idea what I was doing. Honestly, I�
��m surprised anyone read the mess I sent out to the world in the first versions. They weren’t professionally edited, had misleading covers, and I never advertised them. Somehow, I still sold a trickle of books every month.
After these first four novels, I shelved the project, believing it was dead. I would’ve left it like that if not for the constant badgering of a good friend of mine, R.R. Virdi. Don’t ask me why, but he read and liked this series enough that he never let me completely give up. I was allowed to take a break from writing them, but never to say they were dead. When all my other books came over to LMBPN, I hadn’t planned on bringing Judah, but he talked me into it at the last minute.
So now the books have the cover and editing they should’ve had the first time. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work with a really great team of people to make this happen. No writer is ever completely happy with their books (there’s always something we’d like to change). But now these four unlikely books are in the best shape they’ve ever been in. I’m as proud of them as I’ve ever been, win or lose.
These four books are all the Judah Black Novels so far. There haven’t been any more since Playing with Fire essentially because The Lazarus Codex took off and sold like pancakes. I’d like to revisit the world and write more books, to tell the stories I always meant to tell. I hope I get to do that someday soon.
There is a novel in the world currently out, Cold Spell, and a novella, Kiss of Vengeance. Feel free to check it out. If you enjoyed Judah Black, and would like to see more, please let me know by leaving a review on Amazon!
Until next time, wizards!